The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1887-04-20
FRANCES NEW RIFLE.
NEW ARMS AND PROJECTILES BASED
ON ADVANCED SCIENCE.


The Fate of Great Battles Generally De-
cided by the Efficiency of the In
fantry-The FrancO-German Wharf.-The
"ChaIons Rihe.''
The French army has been devoting its
energy to devising new arms and pro
jectiles based upon the most advanced
science. The melinite shell has been
adopted for their artillery, and it is
claimed that the explosive force OF NEIL
mite is 100 times greater than gunpowder
and tenfold as great as dynamite; that
neither masonry nor ironclad forts can
resist its force. The new progressive
powder invented by Col. Brugere, Is
vastly more powerful than ordinary gun
powder; its popularity is that it burns
without smoke, and almost without noise,
and developing its energy gradually while
the proiectiIe is moving through the bar
rel of the gun, the recoil is reduced to
minimum, and it may be better described
as a push rather than a shock.
The fate of all great battles has almost
invariably depended upon the efficiency Of
the infantry. The Macedonian phalanx
of Alexander, the tenth legion of Caesar,
the English infantry of the Black Prince,
the Spanish infantry of Charles V, the
grenadier guards of Frederick the Great,
the imperial guard of Napoleon, the Brit
ish infantry OF Give and Wellington, the
''StonewaIl brigade of Jackson, the Prus-
sian infantry of Germany-these have sue
cessiveIy been the great factors of victory.
Therefore the development of infantry
tactics and arms has always been the OBJ
ject Of great generals. The substitution
of the iron for the wooden ramrOd by
Frederick the Great made the PruSsian in
fantry able to fire more rapidly than their
-i.4o1 ,iah
troduced Prussia as a military power.
Napoleon, changing the principal of infan-
try tactics from the YOlley fire to skirmish
fire, revoluti6nized warfare, and laid
down the principle that the fire
and not the mass of infantry was its
best work Wellington, carrying out this
idea, trusted to the ''thin red line'-in-
fantry in line of battle and not in column;
yet in those days the infantry arm was the
smooth bore musket of very short range.
Though the rifle was furnished to the
flank companies of regiments and to spe-
cial corps fifty years ago it was not until
our own civil war that whole armies were
armed with rifled muslIets, the use of
which made the fate of heavy columns of
attack against steady troops fOregOne
conclusion; witness our attack on Marye's
heights at Fredericksburg and Pickett
charge at Gettysburg. The development
of infantry fire has in fact relegated the
bayonet to the limbo of medieval pike
and Roman swords, and has converted
cavalry into the eyes and ears of the
army rather than its mailed arm in the
decisive moment of battle.
A cavalry charge is magnificent, but
it is not war" as the French Gen. Bos
quet said of the charge of Balaklava.
The cavalry saber has been driven from |
the battlefield by the revolver and rifle; |
in the FrancO-German war, with so, 1000 /
German cavalry and nearly as many
French cavalry, the hospital returns show /
that there were only 212 wounds by |
sabers and butts of muskets, all told At !
Sedan a squadron of the hussars of the /
French imperial guard charged the /
German skirmish line at 400 yards distant;
none of their bodies were found nearer
than 100 yards; three -fOurths of the |
squadron fell in galloping 800 yards.
Such was the terrible work of the breach /
loading needle gun.
Once only was the column of attack !
used in the Franco-German war. In one (
of the battles before Metz, Gen. Stein /
metz formed the famous Brandenburg /
brigade in column to pierce the French /
lines. In spite of the bravery and dis [
cipline of that picked corps, they were /
ANONYMOUSLY routed, and Gen. Steinmetz
reprimanded for thus throwing away the
lives of splendid troops.
If such were the conditions of battle in
1870, what must they be to-day, when the
rapidity of infantry fire has been increased
manifold by the use of magazine breach
leaders and the effective range of mill
tary rifles doubled by the use of progress
sive" powder and improved projectiles?
The French army is now armed with
magazine rifle which possesses almost all
the above qualifcations-the "Chalons
rifle" invented by Col. Lebel, superin-
tendent of the infantry school at Chalons.
The range of the Chalons rife is unprece-
dented At 1000 yards its effects are
frightful; the ball leaves the rifle with
velocity of 800 feet a second, and re-
wolves 5000 times a second; its point
blank range is 500 yards. The caIiber has
been reduced to 32-1O0ths of an inch,
and the lead project1e covered with
thin coating of steel and brass, so that it
may take the rifle grooves without leading
them in the quicknesS of revolution Of the
projectile in the barrel
The Importance of infantry armed with
guns having a point blank range of 500
yards can hardly be overestimated; the
use of a smokeless powder removes one of
the greatest difficulties to quick firing
rifles; the use of magazine guns, like the
Chalons rifle, makes it practically impos-
sible for an enemy to cross the death
swept zone of 500 yards in front of them.
Boston Herald.